The memorialists, therefore, prayed that each proprietor, or combination of two or more proprietors, who might be willing to charge their proportion of the rate for employing the poor upon any particular land to be improved thereby, should be relieved to that extent, from the payment of rate, and that the works so to be undertaken should not be confined to drainage or subsoiling, but might include all works of a productive nature, suited to the wants of the locality for which they were proposed, provided only, that such works should meet the approbation of the Board of Works.

This carefully prepared memorial was met by a refusal, the reasons given for which do not seem very cogent; the real reason, in all probability, not having been directly given at all; the impossibility of supervising townland improvements, with such care as to avoid the malversation and misapplication of funds, having, it is reasonable to suppose, great influence on the decision of the Government.  The reasons given by Lord Bessborough for the refusal were:  1.  That he saw great practical difficulties would be attendant on any attempt to carry the townland-boundary plan into execution; and—­2.  That he also believed it would be inconsistent with the primary object of the Poor Employment Act, which, he said, was meant to meet, as far as possible, the present exigency of the season, by providing sustenance for the destitute, through the means of labour, in the most available manner of which the circumstances of the case would admit.  In giving the option of reproductive work, his Excellency said he had taken upon himself “a responsibility;” but that the option was conceded with as little departure as possible from the spirit of the measures sanctioned by Parliament; whereas the adoption of the townland, instead of the electoral division, would, in many cases, lead to the greatest expenditure, where the amount of destitution was least.  Perhaps his Excellency gave his real reason, when he concluded with something stronger than a hint to the Royal Agricultural Society, which comprised, as he said, the leading gentry of the country.  He calls upon them to discharge their duties in their various localities, and to avoid or prevent the misapplication of the funds given for the relief of the really destitute.  He cannot, he says, forego the opportunity of expressing an earnest hope that they will, in their various relief committees, lend their aid to the Government in resisting a practice which, he has reason to fear, has very extensively prevailed—­namely, “that of allowing persons, who are by no means in a destitute condition, to be employed upon the public works, thus depriving the really distressed of the benefit which was intended for them, as well as withdrawing from the ordinary cultivation of the soil the labour which was essential to the future subsistence of the people."[180]